Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

And then the bus driver honked his horn, twice, and suddenly they were out of the darkness and into Broomeville’s town square. In its center was a fenced-off grassy area with a white gazebo and a statue. On the far end was a building that looked like a Swiss chalet. To Henrik’s left was a two-story red brick building. The building was long and seemed, on its first floor, to house several businesses — a restaurant, a tavern, two beauty salons, a consignment shop (whatever that was). To Henrik’s right was an even larger three-story gray stone building with five white columns supporting a white balcony on the third floor and a white balcony on the second, and hanging from the top balcony were red, white, and blue half circles — they weren’t American flags (there were no stars on the fabric), and Henrik wondered who or what they represented. Possibly Broomeville itself. Anyway, at the very top of the pillars was a piece of white wood with the black words LUMBER LODGE, and on top of that a triangular peak with the black numbers 1792—the date of the building’s construction, or possibly its address. The building listed a little to the left, and some of the stone had been patched, or smeared, with mortar.

Go to the Lumber Lodge and ask for Matthew . This was what Locs had told him to do. “Broomeville!” the bus driver was calling. But Henrik did not move. Suddenly this seemed like a terrible idea; a moment earlier the new world had seemed full of hope, but now it seemed full of mystery and menace. Why would Locs send him to this strange place with its strange flag? Why didn’t she bring him herself? Who was this Matthew? Matthew doesn’t even know who he is . That’s what Locs had said. But what was that supposed to mean? And did that really need saying? Does anyone really know who he is? I do, thought Henrik. I’m Henrik Larsen. OK, but who was he ? Was he any different from Jens Baedrup? How? Who was going to teach him how Henrik was different from Jens? “Who’s getting off at Broomeville !” the bus driver yelled before exiting the bus.

The man across the aisle scooted toward him and whispered, “That’s you.” Henrik didn’t know how he knew this. But the man was right. Henrik got out of his seat, walked down the aisle, down the stairs, picked up his bags from where the bus driver had placed them on the sidewalk, and walked toward the Lumber Lodge. He had to. There was absolutely nowhere else for him to go.

He did what ?” she asked into her cell phone, and then she listened to the whole story again. At the end of it, she had two questions.

“Why did you say it was Stephen Ray Vaughan’s birthday?” Locs knew it was Stevie, not Stephen, but she refused to refer to grown men, even dead grown men, by their boyish diminutives.

“Because it really is his birthday,” the agent said. “And his name was Stevie . He hated to be called Stephen. His mother called him Stephen.”

Jesus Christ, Locs thought, they’ll let anyone be an agent nowadays. But maybe they’d always let anyone be an agent. The agent who’d recruited her, for example.

“And why did you say that about Stephen Wonder?” she asked. The agent didn’t say anything back at first. Locs knew he was wondering whether he should correct her again, and if he did, whether she would have him fired or murdered.

“Because the guy looked so sad,” the agent finally said.

“But hopeful,” Locs said.

“That made it even sadder,” the agent said. “I wanted to hug him.”

“Or slap him,” Locs said. “Either way, he failed the test.”

“You knew he was going to.”

“I didn’t know, ” Locs said. But she did. The test was for the agent to try to get Henrik to call attention to himself, to do something stupid, which she had specifically told Henrik not to do. And if Henrik failed the test, then Locs would have to go to Broomeville under the lame pretense that she and she alone could make sure he didn’t do anything else stupid. In truth, she’d already gotten a rental car and was well on her way to Broomeville. She’d known Henrik would fail. And in knowing that, she’d known that she would fail, too.

“I don’t know why you didn’t just drive him to Broomeville in the first place,” the agent said.

Because I wanted to give myself one last chance not to go back to Broomeville, Locs thought but did not say. “Because Capo wanted it to happen this way,” Locs said. “It was his idea.” This was untrue. Capo was her superior and the agent who’d first recruited her. As far as Capo knew, she was still in Berlin. And if Capo found out that she wasn’t still in Berlin. . well, Capo was well known for the manner in which he took care of people who weren’t where they were supposed to be. But Locs didn’t want to think about Capo just now.

“Capo—” the agent started to say, but Locs cut him off.

“You shouldn’t be worried about Capo,” she said with authority, because she was the agent’s superior, the way Capo was hers. “It’s me you should be worried about.”

Then Locs went quiet and let him think about that for a while. The agent was still on the bus. She could hear its noises in the background — the in-bus movie, the people in the back softly debating whether they could do drugs right in their seats or whether they should repair to the bathroom. Where did the bus go after Broomeville anyway? Canada? Canada was its own country. It had sovereign rights. Nevertheless, she had people in Canada.

“Please don’t have me fired,” the agent said.

“Or murdered,” Locs said, and she hung up. Two hours from now, she would be in Broomeville. It had been seven years since she’d last been there, eight and a half years since she’d first moved there, eight years since she’d first kissed Matthew. Locs back then was not yet Locs. She was still Lorraine. Lorraine Callahan. She’d moved to Broomeville to work for the national wildlife department’s northern New York division. Her job: to look through binoculars. She was looking for American bald eagles on land that was owned by the federal government and leased to Broomeville Forestry Resources Management, a company that, had it been given a more accurate name, would have been titled Broomeville Lumber Company. Or better yet, Broomeville Tree Killers, Inc. It had been that kind of joke that had made Locs especially friendless during her first six months in Broomeville. Her job hadn’t helped, either. If she saw an American bald eagle in one of the trees leased to Broomeville Forestry Resources Management, then she would report it to her superiors, and BFRM would no longer be allowed to manage resources in that particular part of the forest. So far, she’d spotted six eagles in six different parts of the forest. This was another reason she’d been especially friendless during her first six months in Broomeville.

Anyway, it had been early November. Snow was falling lazily, as though it mostly couldn’t be bothered. Lorraine was in the forest, looking through binoculars, even though it was a Saturday, because what else did she have to do? “Locs,” someone said from behind her.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Lorraine said, wheeling around, dropping her binoculars. It was the principal. She’d of course met him. In a town this small, you couldn’t help but meet the junior-senior high school principal. She’d even been to a party at his big old gloomy stone house out by the river. This was the kind of party to which anyone who was anyone was invited, and in Broomeville, if you were a new person, then you were someone, even if you were someone whom no one particularly trusted or liked or wanted to stick around for very long. Lorraine liked the principal, maybe because he seemed to like her. His wife, Ellen, she didn’t like so much, maybe because Ellen called her husband Matty, which Lorraine hated, or maybe because Matty’s wife didn’t seem to like Lorraine much, maybe because Lorraine made a big deal out of calling him Matthew.